A Sailor's Life for Me! is a superb example of how the web can bring history alive for young students.

The website presents an idea of what daily life would have been like aboard the famed USS Constitution, which actively fought in the Quasi War with France, the Barbary Wars, and the War of 1812. Its ability to withstand enemy fire eventually gained it the moniker of "Old Ironsides."

There are three main sections to the site, as well as supplementary materials. The primary sections are a "life of" game, an exploration of the areas aboard the vessel, and an introduction to the men who would have sailed aboard her.

Explore Old Ironsides is perhaps the most informative section. Here, the ship is divided into 24 interactive scenes which introduce shipboard activities—from battle roles, flogging, and burial to the more common activities of dining, holystoning (deck maintenance), and what sailors did with their moments of free time. Each section can be explored clicking on people and items. Clicking provides commentary from fictional sailors (complete with highlighted vocabulary terms), actions and sound effects that bring the scene to life, short biographies of historical USS Constitution sailors, and information on tasks and objects in the scenes. Life stories of the real sailors range from fairly typical naval experiences to an unfortunate sailor who wounded himself by rolling out of his hammock and down a hatch. Two remaining scenes give an idea of where and why people would sign up for voyages and the triumphant return of Old Ironsides.

These scenes provide a strong introduction to shipboard life, covering the basics in an approachable picture-book-like format. The downside is that there is enough information and detail that this portion of the site takes some time to cover in its entirety. Educators may wish to peruse the vessel sections, and select a few scenes that they feel are most important to the topic at hand. There is a seek-and-find incentive for students interested in exploring the entire ship, however, as the ship's dog, Guerriere (also the name of the most famed enemy vessel confronted by the USS Constitution) is located in 11 of the scenes.

Meet Your Shipmates introduces the crew by job and number. For example, the page shows the rank system aboard the vessel as well as how many individuals fit within each rank—from the one captain to the 276 able seamen, 55 ordinary seamen, and 12 boys. Additional roles include quartermasters, boatswain's mates, gunner's mates, the carpenter's mate, the carpenter's yeoman, the sailmaker's mate, the coxwain, the cook, the midshipmen, master's mates, the sailmaker, the carpenter, the gunner, surgeon's maters, the sailing-master, the surgeon, the chaplain, the purser, and lieutenants. Each of these sections can be clicked on for a brief description of the role of the individual(s) in question. Some roles even include a short "diary" of someone known to have served aboard the vessel—including David Debias, a free-born African American ship's boy who tragically crossed into Mississippi and was mistaken for an escaped slave.

The final main section of the site is the interactive game—the site's centerpiece. You begin the game preparing for life as a ship's boy. If students are interested in rising in the ranks, they will want to login to save their progress. Otherwise, the game can be played without registering. As a boy, you engage in tasks such as holystoning the deck, carrying powder for gun drill, and carrying slops without tripping. You are periodically confronted by superiors who ask questions that will increase and decrease your likelihood of promotion, health and happiness, spending money, and popularity with the crew. The game can be repetitive (not unlike life at sea), but may engage students who would otherwise be uninterested in the topic.

If all of the above isn't impressive enough, the site also offers family activities such as baking ship's biscuits, learning about signal flags, and testing buoyancy, as well as educator's resources. Annotated Scenes takes each of the interactive scenes discussed earlier; and provides related primary sources, artifacts, activities, videos, interactive games, and lesson plans. Classroom integration discusses how best teachers may be able to include the website content in their classroom, and explains its correlation to national standards. Lesson Plans let you search activities, lesson plans, artifacts, primary sources, games, and sailors' stories by grade level, content area, and type of resource. Selecting "Social Studies" alone provides 269 options. War of 1812 Resources discusses how to teach the war in different classroom time allotments, an overview, a timeline, a brief section on African Americans aboard the USS Constitution, and related links and suggested reading.

The only fault of this website is that its content may be a bit overwhelming. However, educators can select what is most appropriate for their students from a wealth of knowledge which often goes uncovered in history classrooms.

Furnishes 15 partially-annotated links to political theory resources arranged in four categories: "Idealism and the Ancient World"; "Realism"; "Liberalism"; and "History as Progress." Also includes nine "short pieces that raise questions of contemporary significance, inspired by the classics" on political thinkers from Plato to Marx; a recent newspaper article relating Machiavelli to contemporary times; and a link to the transcript of a 1992 interview with Francis Fukuyama, along with accompanying audio and video clips. A site useful as an introduction to western philosophical writings on political theory and for its attempt to relate classical theory to contemporary issues.

Presenting 325 probate inventories, this website provides a unique window into daily life in Virginia and Maryland between 1740 and 1810. In this time period, county courts appointed appraisers, local men, to visit an estate after its owner died, list what was there, and estimate its value. These listings, called probate records or inventories, can be analyzed to illuminate a family's routines, rituals, and social relations, as well as a region's economy and connection to larger markets. These inventories are a sample from the region at this time, picked to be representative of the furnishings in George Mason's Gunston Hall. They are all digitized, transcribed, and searchable.

For a general overview, the inventories can be browsed by decade and county—including York, Norfolk, Richmond, and Fairfax counties in Virginia. For more detailed information on the role of material culture in colonial life, the site's Interpreting section presents interviews with two scholars who use probate records to discuss topics such as slavery and slave life, credit and debt, and women and property ownership. Three detailed lesson plans, written by Virginia teachers, are also available, providing suggestions for incorporating these rich sources into classroom learning.

Wilshire Boulevard runs for 16 miles in Los Angeles, from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica to Grand Avenue in Downtown. This website offers an interactive journey down the length of this historic street, with more than 100 stops at parks, buildings, and historic landmarks in Westwood/Brentwood, Beverley Hills, Miracle Mile/Carthay Circle, Windsor Square/Hancock Park, Wilshire Center, and the Parks District.

Virtual visitors to Palisades Park in Santa Monica, for example, can see 14 photographs and drawings of the park, spanning from the early 1900s, through the 1940s, and to contemporary photographs, and read a brief description of the park's history. Those interested in the history of architecture will find useful a website feature that allows users to filter all monuments by architect, style, and function. The website also includes a "Memory Book," allowing users to contribute their stories about Wilshire Boulevard and read the stories of others, as they talk about their favorite pizza restaurant in Westwood or their childhood in Beverly Hills in the early 1960s.

This collection includes primary documents about the food conservation program that took place in the United States during World War I. During this time there was great need for food in Europe for both the military as well as civilians. The U.S. Food Administration created programs to conserve food. “Meatless Tuesdays” encouraged Americans to limit their consumption. Other programs promoted the establishment of “war gardens,” small backyard kitchen gardens in which people grew their own vegetables. The collection also includes books that describe these programs and explain how to preserve and cook food.

Although the 45 sources are listed without annotations and in no particular order, the website has a solid search feature. Teachers could introduce this website by searching the word “poster” and using the images of government-created posters to start a classroom discussion on limited resources during World War I. In addition, students should be shown the use of the “display gallery view” feature when looking at their search results. This feature makes it much easier to find relevant information at a glance.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Todd Beuke wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

This collection features images of dams, hydroelectric power plants, and water supply facilities built in Washington State from the late 1890s to the 1950s. The archive contains 695 items, primarily photographs but also some maps, diagrams, and other documents. A book excerpt on Washington's public water projects from Building Washington: A History of Washington State Public Works (Seattle, WA: Tartu Publications, 1998) by historians Paul Dorpat and Genevieve McCoy provides perspective on the photographs. The collection is notable because "many of these dams, power plants and reservoirs were built in some of Washington's most rugged terrain and had features that represented significant engineering feats of their time." Each image is accompanied by full descriptive and bibliographic data.

The site offers three ways to search the archive of photographs: keyword search, search by collection, or an advanced search option by selected fields and subjects. Or the visitor can browse all the items by selecting "view all items" in the search drop-down menu. This website is a useful resource for those interested in the history of Western hydroelectric dams and other water projects in the first half of the 20th century.

Shaping the Constitution revolves around the role of Virginia in early American military and political history.

The first section, Becoming Free and Independent States, offers an overview of the perspectives of early Virginians on the Revolutionary War. The page includes biographies of figures of note, ranging from George Washington to Billy, a slave impressed by the British Navy. Each biography offers titles and/or web links for further reading. The main draw of the section, though, is a collection of 32 primary sources—broadsides, portraits, maps, warrants, petitions, a cartoon, and more. Each primary source can be selected for additional information, a transcript, related sources, and/or a high-resolution copy of the source. One surprise worth noting is that selecting the high-res copy of the source sometimes provides a PDF file with multiple related sources, rather than just the one you may have thought you were downloading.

Each of the following sections follow a similar structure—biographies, primary sources, and a short text overview. Topics include Virginia and the Constitutional debate; Bill of Rights; and 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments.

An additional feature, located within the majority of the individual sections is a "For Educators" button. This button opens a list of lesson plans and their respective Virginia standards. Only the 15th and 19th Amendment portions of the site lack this option.

A laudable fact about this website is that it provides unpleasant sources (such as a photo of an Alexandria slave pen) as well as copies of major government documents. These sources are useful for showing precisely what facts of historical life various political decisions and amendments were created to change.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was covered on news stations around the country. This website provides 230 of these video clips from two local television stations in Roanoke, Virginia. Clips feature both national events, such as the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy, as well as footage of local school desegregation, protests, and interviews on the street.

Accompanying this footage are 14 oral histories (several from Virginians with firsthand knowledge of the Prince Edward Public Schools closing), and 23 documents that chronicle the official development of Massive Resistance in Virginia, in particularly the involvement of Senator Harry F. Byrd. "Essays and Interpretation" provides important historical context and analysis, with detailed pieces on "Virginia's Massive Resistance to School Desegregation" and the development of television news coverage of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia and Mississippi.

This website functions as an easy-to-maneuver and reader-friendly website for gathering information about Arkansas and its impact on American history. Entries are divided into two categories: text and media. Both include subdivisions based on alphabetical listings or gallery images (respectively) in addition to category, type, time period, race and ethnicity, and gender. The Media section offers numerous photos, maps, documents, and video and audio resources. Entries include suggested readings, related links, and media galleries, when applicable.

Some of the more useful features of the site includes a calendar describing events in Arkansas’s history on each day, as well as a photo of the day from the Arkansas gallery. An overview entry provides general information about the state for those beginning to conduct research about Arkansas, and a breadcrumb trail at the top of each page helps readers retrace their steps while visiting the site—a feature users will find very helpful.

Educators will also find more than 100 lesson plans marked by The Butler Center—when planning for topics such as the Civil War, Korean War, and who’s who in Arkansas history. Lesson plans are in PDF format.

Teachers and students will enjoy exploring how the Razorback State played a key role in U.S. history. Teachers will also find the lesson plans from the Butler Center a useful resource for classroom instruction.

This PBS documentary provides many useful resources for teaching the long and influential history of Jewish Americans. At the heart of this video production is the struggle between identity and assimilation. While Jews in America often faced struggles integrating into new communities, their story is common to other immigrant groups and at the same time a "quintessentially American story."

The site is divided into six main sections. Educators will be particularly interested in the historical background offered in Jewish Life in America (which is divided into eleven subsections), the 30 video segments from the documentary, four lesson plans in For Educators, and links to online resources for teaching Jewish American history.

One noteworthy section of the site is Share Your Story. By allowing Jewish American viewers to submit recipes, immigration stories, or family traditions, this site provides an interactive platform that could enhance any classroom. Students can investigate, research, and conduct interviews with family or friends of Jewish heritage and submit their investigations online. Teachers will also find that the video segments, textual information, and online submission tool can work well together to compliment thematic units on immigration, ethnic identity, and moments in history specific to the Jewish experience.